50 Extremely Rare Historical Pictures That Will Completely And Totally Change Your Perspective On The Universe
1.This is what the Space Shuttle Endeavour looked like as it left Earth and traveled into orbit:
It looks like a little toy.
2.This is what a typhoon looks like from space:
Specifically, Super Typhoon Maysak in 2015.
3.This is how big Earth is compared to Saturn:
Earth is PUNY.
4.This is what a sunset looks like from space:
Hmmm. Is this more or less impressive than the sunset your mom has as the background on her iPhone lock screen? Weigh in on this in the comments, please.
5.This is a picture of Pluto and its moons taken in 2006...
6.And this is a much, much clearer picture of Pluto taken only a decade later, in 2015:
By NASA's New Horizons spacecraft from 476,000 miles out.
7.On Feb. 7, 1984, Bruce McCandless II performed the first-ever untethered space walk, and folks, it looks absolutely terrifying:
He used a jet-propelled backpack to maneuver around. It was apparently very, very cold.
8.This is a picture of the ice mountains of Pluto as seen from the New Horizons space probe:
The photo is 230 miles across, to put things into perspective.
9.This is what New Zealand looks like from space:
I think I see Tom Bombadil.
10.This is how big an average-sized comet is compared to Paris:
Specifically the Churyumov-Gerasimenko comet. Very chill, though.
11.This is a REAL picture of the moon crossing in front of the Earth:
The image was taken by the DSCOVR spacecraft about a million miles away from Earth.
12.This is what a solar eclipse looks like from space:
Like a pen blew up all over Earth.
13.In 1972, astronaut Charles Duke left behind a picture of his family on the moon's surface. It's been there ever since:
The back of the photo reads, "This is the family of Astronaut Duke from Planet Earth, who landed on the Moon on the twentieth of April 1972."
14.This picture, taken in 1946, is one of the first images of Earth ever taken from space:
It was captured from a 35-millimeter camera attached to a V-2 rocket.
15.And this is the first picture of Earth from the moon, taken in 1966 by Lunar Orbiter 1:
16.And this is a picture of Earth that was taken 20 minutes before this article was published:
17.The Mars rovers are way, way bigger than you thought they were:
This is the Perseverance rover. It's not a little RC car!
18.This is how big the Moon and Pluto's moon Charon are compared to the Earth:
You know what? I'm glad that puny little dwarf planet doesn't count as a planet anymore.
19.This is what a piece of the moon and a piece of Mars looks like:
Read and see more here.
20.This is what color Venus is in real life:
It's not a big ol' orangey planet from the outside.
21.These are two of the earliest known photographs of Saturn and Jupiter, taken in the 19th century:
22.You're probably familiar with the "Face on Mars," an image of a formation on Mars from the 1970s that launched a million conspiracy theories...
23....well, this is what a much less blurry, much more recent photograph of that same "face" looks like:
I still want to believe.
24.Space and time is absolutely nuts:
25.Buzz Aldrin took humanity's first "space selfie" while on a spacewalk in 1966:
Never heard of a "space selfie"? Well, it's got its own Wikipedia page.
26.Mars is home to the tallest mountain in the solar system, the 72,000-foot-tall Olympus Mons:
It's over 372 miles wide. That's bigger than Arizona.
27.There's a bunch of trash left by humans on the moon. In fact, if you really want to know, there are 96 bags of human waste on that big pie in the sky:
Now, THAT'S amore.
28.Here's a computer illustration of what Olympus Mons looks like from space:
29.This is what Antarctica looks like from space:
Read more about how this image was made here.
30.This is Eugene Cernan, who is, as of 2023, the last man to ever walk on the moon:
He did it way back in 1972. It's been that long, folks!
31.You might recognize Eugene from this iconic picture of his moon walk:
32.This is the Willamette meteorite, the largest meteorite that's ever been found in the United States:
It is the sixth largest in the world and weighs 15.5 tons.
33.And this is the Hoba meteorite, the largest meteorite on Earth:
The largest that we know of, that is. It's located in Namibia.
34.The Great Red Spot on Jupiter is shrinking:
According to NASA, "Some unknown activity in the planet's atmosphere may be draining energy and weakening the storm, causing it to shrink."
35.See that little hole there? This is what Mount Vesuvius looks like from space:
Cool!
36.Way out on the edge of the Solar System is this big ol' hunk of rock called Ultima Thule, Arrokoth, or (486958) 2014 MU69 — the farthest thing from Earth humanity has ever "explored up close":
Reminds me of two peanuts I ate earlier today. Those were some good peanuts.
37.In 2018, NASA captured an unreal-looking rectangular iceberg:
Looks like PS2 graphics.
38.NASA's James Webb Space Telescope just took some brand-new pictures of Uranus. Here's what one of the new photos looks like:
Shiny! Fresh! Uranus!
39.While we're at it, here's another new picture from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, this time of Neptune:
Poseidon would love this.
40.This, to scale, is how far apart the Milky Way galaxy and the Andromeda galaxy are:
FYI, the Milky Way is about 100,000 light-years across.
41.This is a close-up of some well-worn pebbles on the surface of Mars:
The most fascinating picture of rocks you'll see all day. Let me know in the comments if you've seen more interesting rocks than these.
42.Speaking of Mars, this is what a sunset looks like on that there planet:
Not as nice as Key West, but what are you gonna do. Martians make do.
43.This is what the moon looks like in the Northern Hemisphere...
44....and this is what the moon looks like in the Southern Hemisphere. It's upside down:
Well, I guess that just depends on the moon you lived your life with.
45.This is what Jupiter would look like if it were as close as the moon:
Petition to replace the moon with Jupiter. Get on it, Biden.
46.This is what Ireland looks like from space:
I think I see Bono.
47.This is astronaut Joseph P. Allen IV doing maintenance on a satellite in the middle of the cold, dark void of space:
Again, no thanks!
48.This is what the eye of a hurricane looks like from above:
Specifically, the eye wall of Hurricane Katrina.
49.This is the last image NASA's InSight rover sent from Mars before running out of power at the end of its mission last December:
50.And finally, this is the statement President Jimmy Carter wrote and put aboard the Voyager 1 spacecraft, intended for any aliens the probe might encounter:
It reads:
"This Voyager spacecraft was constructed by the United States of America. We are a community of 240 million human beings among the more than 4 billion who inhabit the planet Earth. We human beings are still divided into nation states, but these states are rapidly becoming a single global civilization.
"We cast this message into the cosmos. It is likely to survive a billion years into our future, when our civilization is profoundly altered and the surface of the Earth may be vastly changed. Of the 200 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy, some — perhaps many — may have inhabited planets and spacefaring civilizations. If one such civilization intercepts Voyager and can understand these recorded contents, here is our message:
"This is a present from a small distant world, a token of our sounds, our science, our images, our music, our thoughts, and our feelings. We are attempting to survive our time so we may live into yours. We hope someday, having solved the problems we face, to join a community of galactic civilizations. This record represents our hope and our determination, and our good will in a vast and awesome universe."
